A Red Deer industrial sand plant becomes a wireless repeater location and optical-link test site.
Most people saw an industrial sand plant. The XpressNet crew saw an elevated place to mount a repeater.
John remembers a repeater on top of the Calfrac sand facility in Red Deer's Edgar Industrial Park, part of the effort to deliver connectivity to nearby industrial businesses.
Then somebody had the irresistible networking thought: what if a cable wasn't necessary at all? The team tested infrared free-space optical equipment—effectively beaming a connection between locations with carefully aimed light.
It was an experiment, not a guarantee that every nearby building became a paying laser-link customer. But it made for wonderfully futuristic conversations in an otherwise very practical industrial park.
The cartoon imagines John and a colleague lining up equipment while Alberta weather tries to join the engineering meeting without an invitation.
The sand plant, it turned out, was useful for more than sand.
Lesson learned: networking people can turn almost any rooftop into an infrastructure proposal.